June 30, 2012

Albemarle’s Planning Commission is working to improve the way the county can best provide affordable living choices to its residents.

The commission’s recommendations will be reviewed by the Board of Supervisors later this year as it considers changes to the 2005 Affordable Housing Policy and whether to make it part of the updated Comprehensive Plan.

Ron White, Chief of Housing, Albemarle County

Current policy sets expectations for the development community as to the affordable housing support its members will need to include in a rezoning request. At a minimum, Albemarle expects 15 percent of new homes to be deemed affordable or for the developer to provide an equivalent cash contribution.

“It’s pretty much the developer’s decision,” said Wayne Cilimberg, Albemarle’s director of planning. “They craft the proffers based around what they interpret the policy to be and, in discussions with staff, what we’ve indicated what we could look at.”

Proffers are the voluntary contributions made by a developer to mitigate project impacts and to help gain the support of local officials for a rezoning request. They may include cash, open space, transportation improvements, school sites, but always some contributions toward affordable housing.

Albemarle’s housing director, Ron White, told the commission at a work session earlier this week that recent cash proffers for affordable housing have been used either as down-payment assistance or to repair existing affordable housing units. Since the policy was approved, $476,809 has been received and of that amount, $411,385 has been invested for those purposes.

“If you want to look at a comprehensive affordable housing goal, it’s not just creating new units, but also, in some way, maintaining the existing stock,” White said.

Earlier this year, officials identified seven shared priorities: historic preservation, entrance corridors, environment, housing, economy, transportation and land use. In separate meetings Tuesday, each planning commission began identifying specific opportunities for the first three of those topics.

“What we are looking for is for you to discuss these topics and come up with … specific opportunities to work with the city to come up with joint goals,” said Frederick.

The TJPDC is working with the city, county and the University of Virginia as part of a three-year $1 million federal grant awarded in 2010 for what is known as the Livable Communities Planning Project. One goal is to facilitate the comprehensive plan updates that guide local government planning decisions.

Albemarle Commissioner Bruce Dotson noted the results of a community survey from a previous comprehensive plan update.

“The thing that I remember from that … was how many residents of the city said that what they liked about the area were things that are located in the county, and vice versa, how many county residents liked things located in the city,” Dotson said. “The ultimate success in preserving the rural area is when urban people value it, and vice versa.”

“This is a region that has grown quite a bit and you have a lot of congestion and, quite honestly, the state has not invested the type of money that you need,” said Sean T. Connaughton, Virginia’s secretary of transportation.

Connaughton was the guest of the North Charlottesville Business Council, a group of the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce. The organization was formed in 1993 in part to lobby against alternatives to the bypass. NCBC member Henry Weinschenk, the owner of Express Car Wash, is a long-time opponent of one such alternative, converting signalized intersections along existing U.S. 29 to grade-separated interchanges.

“The bypass is logical, commonsense and it’s the way we’ve been suggesting for a long time,” Weinschenk said. “To build grade-separated interchanges, you’d essentially have to destroy most business along U.S. 29.”

The interchanges were discussed while the Places29 Master Plan was developed in the last decade, but their construction was de-prioritized before the Albemarle Board of Supervisors adopted the plan in February 2011.

The long-anticipated Crozet Library broke ground on June 26, 2012. In attendance at this very Crozet event (attendees enjoyed bluegrass music while they arrived) were state and local officials and community members all excited to see this dream become a reality.

When the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority’s board of directors voted 4-3 in December to select a location for the pump station, it also set a June 30 deadline to determine how the cost of the $40 million project would be shared.

All three of Albemarle’s representatives on the board voted against the option because they favored replacing the station at its existing location adjacent to the city’s Riverview Park. That option had a cost estimate of $27 million.

The RWSA met for the first time in a year and a half at the Moores Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant

“We knew of no engineering reason to move it to another site and the cost of moving it was very large,” said Liz Palmer, a member of the ACSA’s board. “We thought we could design it so that it was acceptable to the community at its present site and save ratepayers $13 million.”

Instead, the station will be moved onto land at the Moores Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant. A 2,000-foot-long tunnel will carry sewage to the new station via a route that will go underneath Riverside Avenue and other roads.

The station’s replacement is one of several items mandated by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. The new pump station will be able to handle a peak capacity of 53 million gallons a day. The existing station cannot handle large volumes of stormwater, leading to sewage spills into the Rivanna River.

The RWSA charges the city and county different wholesale rates based on the percentage of flow from each community. If a specific agreement is not in place, the cost-share for new infrastructure is based on that percentage.

However, that could change if Albemarle County is successful in getting a federal infrastructure improvement grant.

Under the federally funded Safe Routes to School program, localities may apply for grants to improve paths leading to schools to make them more pedestrian friendly. The county already has received such a grant for Burnley-Moran and Crozet elementaries and is looking to do it again.

The ACCT worked with the county to develop a travel plan for the schools to propose solutions for existing hazards. Students who walk to school are often forced to do so in the road or in the drainage shoulder.

The plan, still in its initial phase, consists of seven separate projects, each of which must be prioritized by the Department of Community Development before construction may begin.

“We have a priority list of sidewalks that we use for our request for sidewalk funding,” explained David Benish, chief of planning, in an interview. “The ability to implement the [Safe Routes to School] plan is based on the amount of funding available to do [such plans], plus all the other priority projects.”

Members of the development community, environmental leaders and Albemarle County officials came together last week to discuss proposed changes to the development review process. The adjustments are intended to streamline the process by which projects are reviewed.

A collection of plans and requirements guiding development in Albemarle County

“It’s really about trying to shorten those timeframes, avoid those regulations that are not necessary, continue to maintain opportunities for the public to be involved and, overall, to maintain community quality,” said Wayne Cilimberg, Albemarle’s director of planning.

The hope is that the proposed process would provide clear expectations of the applicants and, in doing so, not only render decisions by the county in a more timely manner, but reduce the number of application re-submittals, which cost projects time and money.

“Because our application requirements are not tightened down, we find that there are things that are not provided [by the applicant] that are needed, but we’re not hearing about it until 46 days into the process,” said Cilimberg, regarding the inefficiencies of the current process. “We really would want to avoid that.”

The proposed review process for proposals that go before the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors would require applicants to submit a pre-application form with basic information about the project. Applicants would then be required to attend a pre-application meeting with county staff to identify areas of the initial project proposal that may require modification.

Born in Oakland, California (one of the first Kaiser Permanente babies) and raised in La Grange, Texas (home of the Chicken Ranch for those who know Texas), first came to Virginia for grad school and loved it. I seem to have kept moving from the left to the right throughout my life.

When and why did you move to the Charlottesville/Albemarle area?

Moved to Albemarle in 1999 from Nashville. My wife and I went to grad school at Virginia Tech, fell in love with the mountains, and when an opportunity arose to get back to this part of Virginia, we jumped.

What neighborhood do you live in now?

Ivy and love it.

Family (spouse, kids, etc)?

Wife of 32 years, Ann, statistician working in pharmaceutical research. Adult daughter, Scout, who lives in Austin. Adult son, Kyle, proudly serving in the Old Guard of the U.S. Army.

What is your alma mater and when did you graduate?

B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 1979 (3rd generation U.T. grad); M.B.A. from Virginia Tech in 1986.

What were you doing before coming to the County?

Working as an engineering consultant in Nashville, Tennessee, primarily in water resources.

Each Friday from 4-5 PM, tune in to hear area journalists and guests discuss local news, culture, and community issues in the Charlottesville area. Whether we're talking about city politics, scientific innovations, or the local music scene, you'll get to hear in-depth discussion about stories that matter.